i use pro-amps for all my speakers, except for the subs which have their own amplification.i would not want it any other way.

J.B do you mind sharing with us how you go about hooking up pro amps to your AVR? Did you use RCA to XLR adaptor or some sort? and my understanding is that consumer grade AVR have a pre-out of 1.0V which is less than the requirement of pro amps in order to drive them in full power. Did you do anything to overcome that or is that none issue in real world? Thanks!

I read the online manual and the input sensitivity is 1.4v so it should not be an issue. I could not seem to find the voltage gain spec though. It has rca inputs and xlr so lots of configuration possibilities. FWIW I really don't know how they get that kind of power out of a 10lb amp. Interested to hear you opinion on its performance.

i use pro-amps for all my speakers, except for the subs which have their own amplification.i would not want it any other way.

J.B do you mind sharing with us how you go about hooking up pro amps to your AVR? Did you use RCA to XLR adaptor or some sort? and my understanding is that consumer grade AVR have a pre-out of 1.0V which is less than the requirement of pro amps in order to drive them in full power. Did you do anything to overcome that or is that none issue in real world? Thanks!

The later Denon AVRs have pre-amp voltage of over 4 volts, this was tested by audioholics a while back when they did a review of an AVR similar to my X4000. You could probably contact the AVR company and find out that specification as it seems to be hard to find on some, but it may be similar. I researched this when making sure that the AVR preouts could be used with high quality, high powered amps.

i went the simplest way by using cable with RCA to TR (1/4" phone) on the ends.

when a manufacturer specifies an output of 1 volt, it only indicates the output level for a specific input level;normally preamp outputs should swing higher than that level.

i haven't checked with my current equipment, but on my former preamp, the max undistorted output was something like 16 Vrms, and a standard output of 2 V.I'm certain it is less with my current preamp, but so far, i've never lacked power in my small room.maybe in a large room the preamp outs would not give a signal high enough to drive the amps to max output when needed; then, i would try XLR cables, and i also would increase the sensitivity settings of the amps: my surround amps are set at -6 dB and the front amps at -10 dB.there are some "adapter boxes" made that go between the preamp and the proamp to increase the available voltage in case the preamp output is too low.

Weight: it has nothing to do with sound quality, but everything to do with the type of power supply and the class of amplification used.

With the case of the LFR, you are running the pre-out from your receiver into the DSP, and that is re-configuring the signal from 2 channels into 4. So the question should not be how much signal is output from your receiver, but how much gain/loss is thrown into the mix with the DSP??

Perhaps Ian will weigh into this question or someone who is in the know from the Axiom group.

I was ready to measure the amperage of the pre-out via spectrum analyzer tonight and just my luck, few seconds before I start my measurement my Onkyo TX-NR5008 just decided to die on me (no sound output from any speaker at all). Upon some research, late Onkyo AVR models seem to all to suffer some sort of HDMI board failures due to overheat/cold soldering. I decide to sell this thing once for all (I will bring it to my company lab tomorrow and have my engineers fix this damn thing) and just get a quality preamp with full XLR output instead. So far I am debating what to get,

Ive got the 8801. My previous pre-amp was a Krell HTS 7.1. I couldn't Justify the expense of another Krell.. Even more so that they are not owned by Don any more..

I'm really impressed with the 8801, and do not feel it's a downgrade in any way. Infact, i bought one of Marantz's slim line receivers after buying the 8801..

I had similar requirements as yourself. I briefly thought about Anthem, but again.. They are a small manufacture.. The larger companies have much larger R&D budgets, and that budget is spread over a much larger number of units sold.

I don't know if the 500av was out when i was in the market. So, i can't speak to that one, and i didn't consider yamaha at all really.

I suppose I am somewhat biased, however, I purchased the Yamaha CX-A5000 "Aventage" Pre-Pto back a few months ago and because I have had previous Yamaha equipment in recent years along with Marantz and Onkyo, I personally found the Yamaha stuff had the most reliable HDMI connectivity especially when dealing with finnicky cable/sat boxes. From my experience, compared to the competitors(Marantz, Onkyo) it had all of the features and was better overall value and has a full four year warranty.

In addition, apparently to accommodate the forthcoming HDMI 2.0 spec., there is going to be a firmware update on this unit shortly to handle the most up-to-date 4K, 50/60hz spec. No need to replace the unit down the road in order to handle the latest and greatest video.